Page 113 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

“Zach, I know what you’re thinking,” Jojo whispered from behind me. The wobble in her soft, husky voice cut me down to my core. “Don’t do it. We will fight together .”

The sound of footsteps echoing in the dark, empty space behind the bookshelf sank my stomach to my feet.

“Uh-oh,” Mom cooed. “Looks like you’re out of time. Last chance to save your best friend and the thug, Zachary. ”

I moved fast, shoving Max behind me next to Jojo. “Get her the fuck out of here,” I hissed.

“Zach, no!” Jojo cried.

“Go!” I shouted. “Please, baby girl. Please .”

“Stop it, Max. Zach! ”

And then Frankie emerged from the secret doorway.

He raised his handgun and fired one clean shot into the back of Mom’s bodyguard’s head. Gore splattered the bookshelves, and the guy dropped to the floor, just another expendable Ferrero soldier after all.

“Oh, are we having a party?” Frankie asked as he crept into the office, his gun now trained on the back of Mom’s head. “Sorry I’m late, but it took me just a minute to find this very neat new set of stairs off floor fifty-nine. I’m almost impressed, sister.”

My mom had frozen, her gun now limp in her grip as she raised her hands slowly in the air. “The ways you’ve betrayed me, little brother,” she said through gritted teeth. “After everything I’ve done for you. Everything I’ve given you.”

Frankie smirked. He looked like he’d been busy—his black tank top was so blood spattered, I could barely make out the image of Che Guevara on the front. His dark hair stuck to his sweaty forehead, and he had a nasty-looking gash on his bicep.

“What the fuck is going on?” Noah hissed in our ears.

“The cavalry is here,” Jojo whispered back. “I don’t think Andrea’s team will be joining us.”

“Indeed,” Frankie said to my mom as he prowled around her, gun still leveled at her head.

He came to a stop as he reached her front, and his warm brown eyes clashed with her dark ones—the loathing palpable between them.

“You have given me so much, dear sister. Lots of interesting work. A paltry salary that kept me fed until I received access to the guilt trust our father left me. The Ferrero name. The constant reminder that I’m lucky you didn’t drown me in the bathtub when I was a baby. ”

“Bitch,” Max rasped under his breath, the single word soaked with ire on Frankie’s behalf.

Those two were cute. Jojo did not know I was on this ship, and I had no plans to tell her.

“So,” Frankie went on, “I have actually brought you a present, sister. To repay you for everything you’ve done for me. I’m excited for a little family reunion, as it were.”

What the fuck…?

Another body emerged from the secret doorway—a woman, vaguely familiar to me, dressed in a billowing black evening gown as if she’d just come from the gala downstairs.

I studied her features as she stepped into the low light. Blonde hair swept into an elegant, low ponytail. Brown eyes. Slight wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that said she was close to my mom’s age but had allowed herself to age a bit more gracefully than Mom had.

The woman wore a wide smile that set off flashes in my memory. Bits and pieces of another blond whose smiling face had faded away over all of these years.

“Aunt… Aunt Gemma?” I sputtered.

Mom whirled with a gasp. “What the hell is this, Gemma?”

I could only stare, struck dumb. I hadn’t seen my aunt since I was five years old. Sensing my need for her, Jojo snuck into my arms. She whispered, “I didn’t realize it, Zach. I’ve only met her once, over secure video. That’s Gemini.”

The original benefactor of the Shadows. My dad’s sister. The absent family member I never thought about because she lived in Switzerland and hadn’t come back to the City after my father’s death.

Gemma didn’t wither under my mom’s challenging stare.

“This is about the fact that I never once believed that my brother died in his sleep of natural causes,” she said, her calm, resolute words slightly accented.

“It was too convenient that he just happened to pass away so suddenly—so tragically—a mere three days after he’d called to tell me he’d decided to leave his cold, morally bankrupt wife.

So soon after he’d decided he was going to run away with his son and never look back. ”

Cold leached into my veins. My ears began to ring. I clung to Jojo to remain standing. Bennett pressed into my other side.

“You’re delusional, Gemma,” Mom spat.

Gemma grinned again—her familiar smile making my chest ache. “You forget, Andrea, that the von Rotz family is not without resources. Just because we don’t hail from one of your top Tier City families doesn’t mean we don’t have connections. And lots and lots of money.”

My dad was Christian von Rotz, and he came from old Swiss money. He and my mom met on vacation in the Alps back when they were both in college. I was told I’d been to Switzerland once when I was two, but I didn’t remember it at all.

Gemma went on, “I had his body exhumed, Andrea. Right under your nose.”

Mom paled, and I knew without a doubt it was all true.

“Fentanyl. Enough to kill a horse,” Gemma spat. “How nice to have the medical examiner on the Family payroll.”

I clutched Jojo tightly as she gaped at my aunt before she turned to whisper into my ear, “I didn’t know, Zach. Gemini never told us who she was or why she joined the Shadows—only that she’d lost someone close to her to the Families. I promise I would’ve told you if I’d known.”

I pressed a kiss to her hair. “I know, baby girl. It’s okay.”

Nothing was okay, but the fact that Jojo had been allied with my aunt—who had been hiding this huge fucking secret—without knowing it was not the issue.

Frankie tutted. “Terrible, sister. Murder is so run-of-the-mill around here, but your own husband? The father of your precious son and Heir?”

“He was going to embarrass me,” Mom said, seething. “He threatened to take Zachary from me. I did what I had to do to protect this Family like I always do .”

Gemma glared at her, her lip curling with disgust. “And everything I’ve done since I figured out what you did has led to this moment. I put my fortune into the very organization that’s now brought you to your knees, led by the brave girl you tried to murder when she was eleven years old.”

My mom shook her head, like she refused to accept any of this. She finally turned those cold, lifeless eyes to me. “Zachary, I only ever wanted to protect you. You are a Ferrero. You can’t listen to anyone that isn’t our Family. I am your mother .”

I threaded my fingers through Jojo’s as I met my mom’s imperious stare. “Not a monster, huh? Fuck you, Mom. Every single person standing in this room is more my family than you have ever been. You took my dad from me. You tried to take my girl from me. You can rot. In. Hell .”

Frankie beamed at me, pride in his wild eyes, and he nodded his approval at what we both knew I was going to do next.

I went to grab Bennett’s gun from his hand. I had to end this .

She had to pay.

But Gemma beat me to it.

She pulled the tiniest pistol I’d ever seen from the pocket of her dress, and she fired one shot into my mom’s temple.

I shut my eyes. My mom deserved to die for everything she’d done, but I didn’t need to see her skull blown apart—even if I had been about to be the one to do that very thing to her.

She was still my fucking mom.

Princess pulled me closer, pressing my face into the crook of her neck, and I breathed her in. She smelled nice—like vanilla—and her warm skin and slow, measured breaths soothed me. “It’s over, Zach,” she whispered. “She’s gone.”

“Is he okay?” Noah asked quietly.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. “I will be. I promise.”

I felt a hand squeeze my arm, and I lifted my head from Jojo’s shoulder to meet Frankie’s eerily subdued stare. “This was the best way,” he said quietly. “I’ll just be going now.”

I could only nod as he slipped quietly back out the secret entrance, disappearing into the night, like he did.

“Zach?” Gemma asked tentatively.

I turned her way, studying her and ignoring my mother’s body strewn at her feet.

The apology was clear on Gemma’s face as she said, “I know I took that away from you just now, but ultimately, I thought it was the least I could do for you—so you weren’t…

burdened with it forever.” She stepped around the bodies on the floor, moving closer to where I still stood, holding Jolie in my arms. “And I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you all these years.

I… I didn’t know that you hadn’t become just like your mother.

I’d thought you were probably a lost cause. ”

I shrugged, finding I didn’t have it in me to be offended by that.

“There’s nothing more you could’ve done for me, Aunt Gemma.

You did what you could—supported the Shadows, who saved my girl and brought her back to me.

You got justice for my dad and for Jolie.

” I released Jojo, and I walked over to Gemma and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome, honey,” she whispered back. “I’d… I’d like to come around more. Get to know you, if that’s okay? You look so much like a dark-haired Christian. It ’s uncanny.”

“Sure,” I replied. “I’ll set you up with a suite in Knight Tower. I’m thinking I’ll gut this one.”

Her smile was grateful. “That sounds perfect.”

Then the door behind us—the office’s actual door—burst open.

Rocky stood there, weapons raised in both hands and a whole group of tactical-geared Shadows behind him. “Everything good in here?” he asked, lowering his guns as he took in the scene. “Oh, hey, Gemini. What, uh… what are you doing here?”

I sighed as everyone let out an awkward chuckle. “Fuck this night. I hate it here—let’s go home.”

“You got it,” Jojo said, grasping my hand again. “I love you, Zach. I’m sorry it came to this.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I love you too, Princess. You weren’t going to be safe until she was gone.”

She nodded solemnly, squeezing my hand as she led me away from the scene, and I felt lighter with every step I took.